


help me (hold onto you)

by chuckbass



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: AU where adam has a phone, Adam Parrish Loves Ronan Lynch, Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Panic Attacks, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Song: The Archer (Taylor Swift), Songfic, adam POV because i was having lots of emotions, author likes writing ronan dialogue because his swearing is cathartic, gratuitous use of italics and em dashes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-19 14:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22812670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuckbass/pseuds/chuckbass
Summary: Adam breathed in, held, breathed out. An imitation of Ronan’s smoker’s breath. A shortened version of his panic attack breathing. “I’m staying, too,” he murmured, not daring to open his eyes. “I mean, I’m going, but. I’m coming back. To you. Always to you.”OR: Adam has a lot of angst. Ronan helps. Featuring panic attacks, late night drives, dream lilies, and Ronan-compliant language.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 13
Kudos: 177





	help me (hold onto you)

_Combat, I’m ready for combat_

_I say I don’t want that, but what if I do?_

Don’t fight with Blue. Don’t fight with Gansey. Don’t fight with Blue. Don’t fight with Gansey. Adam repeated it over and over to himself, even as he felt anger and frustration burning a hole in his chest. Don’t fight with Blue. Don’t fight with Gansey.

Fighting with Ronan, on the other hand.

Fighting with Ronan was like the rumble of thunder after a lightning strike: invariable, inevitable, unstoppable.

It was also, Adam thought, oddly dependable.

It probably wasn’t a good thing that fighting with Ronan was the only thing he could really depend on. That seemed like the type of statement a therapist would frown at and ask him to elaborate on. It was probably some screwed-up response to his screwed-up childhood, an inability to function without some level of conflict in his life, but whatever. Gansey found comfort in searching for dead Welsh kings, and Ronan found comfort in drinking and drag-racing, and Blue found comfort in calling Gansey in the middle of the fucking night, so. Adam was allowed to find comfort in arguing with Ronan.

Not that it was always easy to fight with Ronan. Sometimes, it took real effort to bait him into an argument, more effort than it was worth. It was surprising, honestly, and a bit suspicious — like Ronan was purposely trying _not_ to fight. Which wasn’t possible, of course. Ronan liked fighting more than he liked drinking, which was to say, he liked it a great deal. But sometimes, Adam swore he was biting back his sharpest remarks, even in the middle of the blowout. 

“Jesus, Parrish, what’s your fucking problem _now_?” Ronan bit out from his usual spot on the floor. “Was I breathing too loud? Sorry, here, just let me fucking suffocate so you can get your damn beauty sleep.”

Adam ground his teeth even louder, turning over violently under his blanket. “Or maybe you could just dream up something that helps with snoring,” he snarled, wrapping his thin pillow around his ears.

“If you’re so fucking annoyed, why don’t you just ask me to leave?” 

Good question. Adam’s mind turned itself inside out trying to find an acceptable answer. _Because you’re not the person I’m actually angry with. Because I don’t really care if you snore. Because I don’t want to be alone._

_Because I want you to stay._

“Oh, so you can go back to Monmouth and dream up a horde of Gansey-killing hornets? No thanks, don’t need _that_ on my conscience, too.”

Ronan sat up. That usually would have been the straw to break the camel’s back, the thing that lured him into a truly epic screaming match, but instead he just raised an eyebrow at Adam in the dark. “‘Too?’ What do you mean, ‘too?’”

Adam huffed out a long sigh that was supposed to sound aggravated but really just came out tired. “Nothing,” he snapped, turning over again. “Just go to sleep, Lynch.”

“No, seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Adam glanced once at his alarm clock. 2:52 AM. He had worked till 11, done homework till 2:30, had to be up at 6. All he wanted was some god damn sleep, and he wasn’t going to get it till Ronan backed down. And Ronan wouldn’t back down till he got what he wanted.

Adam sat up.

“Tell me I’m not crazy,” he said, voice ten degrees softer than it had been a moment. “Tell me you see it too. Tell me it’s real.”

Ronan, completely misjudging the context of the statement, looked around the apartment wildly. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“Jesus, Lynch, I mean — Gansey and Blue. Tell me you see it.”

He couldn’t see Ronan’s face well enough to read his reaction, but there was a definite shoulder-drop, a slight shake of the head. “Of course I see it,” Ronan said slowly. “So that’s what this is about? Gansey stealing your girl?”

Adam knew that Ronan couldn’t see him, but he rolled his eyes anyway. “Ugh. No. First of all, she’s not ‘my girl.’ We’re broken up. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even — I don’t even like her like that anymore.”

Something about Ronan’s posture changed. “So why does it matter?”

Adam rubbed his hands roughly with the heels of his hands, suddenly feeling incredibly ridiculous. “It doesn’t — Nevermind. Nevermind. Go to sleep.” He leaned back again, but his head hadn’t even hit the pillow yet before he felt a hand on his leg. 

“Come on, Parrish, just spit it out already.” 

Adam groaned louder at this, but sat back up anyway. “Fine. Whatever. But don’t spend tomorrow complaining about how I kept you up all night talking about my feelings or whatever. I want it on record that this wasn’t my idea.”

“Yeah, whatever, duly noted. Just talk. Christ.”

Adam considered his next words carefully, letting the room fall into comfortable silence for several long moments before finally going on. “They don’t feel like they can tell me. That’s the problem. They think I’ll be jealous, or hurt, or angry. And… I’ve given them plenty of reason to think that, really.”

If he couldn’t see the dark outline of Ronan against the darker backdrop of the room, he would’ve thought maybe Ronan had laid down and gone to sleep while waiting for Adam to speak. But, no, Ronan was still sitting upright, completely quiet aside from his even breathing and the slight grind of his teeth.

“Hello? Earth to Ronan?”

Ronan heaved another sigh, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. “Parrish, you’ve gotta give me a second to figure out how to explain this without offending you, okay?”

Anger flared through Adam’s chest. “Why do you all treat me like I’m something breakable?” 

“Okay, you really don’t get it, and it isn’t your fucking fault, so I’m gonna spell it out as well as I fucking can, and I’d appreciate it if you could shut your mouth for one fucking second, okay? You didn’t grow up like the rest of us, and I don’t mean rich or whatever, I mean loved. Okay? And that’s not your god damn fault. It really isn’t. You don’t know what love looks like, so we’re trying to fucking teach you, but Jesus, Parrish, you gotta meet us halfway. This is part of what love looks like: not wanting to hurt each other. They aren’t afraid of you. They don’t think that lowly of you. They’re just — misguided, or whatever. They’re just stupid. It doesn’t have anything to do with you being a shitty person or something.”

Adam didn’t reply right away, just picked idly at the seams of his blanket. He hated hearing Ronan make sense. He hated knowing that Ronan was right, especially when it meant that he was wrong. He hated the way that Ronan had said he didn’t know what love was, because that was so on the fucking nose that it hurt. 

“I want —” His voice cracked, oh fucking great, now Ronan was _definitely_ going to make fun of him. “I want to know. But I don’t think I’m built for it.”

Slowly, as if afraid he would frighten him, Ronan reached a hand out and nudged his fingers against the outline of Adam’s calf through the blanket. “Trust me,” he said, voice uncharacteristically low, “You’re built for it.”

Adam sounded like a frightened child. “How do you know?”

Despite his closeness, Ronan was completely unreadable. “You’ve just gotta trust me on that.”

It was a bullshit answer, and they both knew it, but Adam just hummed in agreement. In all honesty, he _did_ trust Ronan. Not just with that, but with his life, too. With everything.

Ronan brushed his fingers across Adam’s leg again, then laid his head back down on his folded-up jacket. “Now go to sleep, Parrish,” he said.

“Okay,” Adam said softly, and he did.

_I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost_

_The room is on fire, invisible smoke._

“You’re creating a draft,” Ronan mumbled, mouth halfway stuck to his pillow.

Adam froze in his pacing, turning an apologetic look to Ronan through the darkness. “Did I wake you?” he asked guiltily. He heard more than saw Ronan shake his head.

“Nah,” Ronan said, dragging the word out. He held his hands out, cradling something in his palms. “Wanted to give you this.”

Adam crawled across the bed, flicking the lamp on before taking the dream gift. It was, to his surprise, a very normal-looking flower. A white lily, its petals still damp with dream-dew. He smiled softly at the fragile flower, then looked up at Ronan for an explanation.

Ronan just shrugged. “I saw it and thought of you,” he said, stretching his bare arms above his head. “It doesn’t need water.” He scooped it out of Adam’s hands with that sort of softness he reserved for dream-things and Adam, set it on his bedside table, then turned back to Adam. “What’s on your mind?”

It was Adam’s turn to shrug. “Wanna go for a drive?”

Ronan grinned and slid out of bed.

In the darkness in front of the BMW, Ronan tossed Adam the keys, but he just threw them back. “You drive,” he said, and Ronan nodded, never one to argue about late-night drives. Especially not when they were Adam’s idea, when Adam was obviously bothered by something, when Adam was climbing into the passenger’s seat in just sweatpants, feet and chest bare.

They left the Barns and turned left, venturing deeper into the countryside, and Ronan turned on his music but kept the volume low enough for Adam to speak if he wanted to. Which he did. He just needed a second, and Ronan willingly obliged.

Halfway through the third song, Adam finally reached forward to turn the music all the way down. “I had a nightmare,” he said, feeling very foolish for no reason at all. 

Ronan nodded, glancing over at him for just a fraction of a second before returning his eyes to the road. The silent acknowledgment gave Adam the confidence to continue.

“It’s one that I have a lot. I have a couple of recurring nightmares, but this one…” Despite spending the past hour thinking about the dream, Adam’s words were failing him. He rubbed a hand gruffly across his face, tried again. “This one’s worse than the others, because it’s real.”

In the driver’s seat, Ronan shifted gears, nodding quietly.

“I know it’s ridiculous. You don’t have to tell me that it’s ridiculous. I’m not asking for absolution or whatever. It’s just… God, why is this so hard?” He laughed humorlessly, leaning his head back against the headrest and glaring at the ceiling. “I dream about the demon. The possession. Whatever. And it feels so real. Like it’s happening. Over and over again. And then I wake up next to you and I can’t stop seeing the look on your face, the bruises on your neck, and, fuck, I just—” 

Without warning, Ronan swerved off the road and suddenly cut the engine. Adam stopped talking, just watched in bewilderment as Ronan unbuckled his seatbelt and slid out of the car in one fluid motion. Ronan walked around the car, opened Adam’s door, and said, “Come on.”

“Huh?” Adam asked even as he unbuckled his seatbelt and followed Ronan out of the beemer. Ronan took his hand as soon as he had stepped out, barely let him close the door before leading him around to the front, and then he climbed up on the hood and laid back without a word. Adam blinked once, twice, absurdly confused, and then climbed up beside his boyfriend.

The hood was damp with dew and still warm beneath them, but Adam shivered anyway, and Ronan wrapped an arm loosely around him, giving Adam the choice between burrowing closer or pulling away. He chose to move closer, albeit nervously, resting one hand palm-down on Ronan’s stomach and tucking his chin into Ronan’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Adam whispered after a second, the words tasting dangerous as they slipped out of his mouth.

“You won’t,” murmured Ronan, rubbing comforting circles on the bare skin of Adam’s back. His breath was warm on Adam’s good ear. “You could never hurt me.”

“Hm,” said Adam, because he was feeling very masochistic at the moment. “I beg to differ.”

To his credit, Ronan did not roll his eyes. He just sighed, deep and wistful, and said, “I am not afraid of you.”

“I’m afraid of me,” Adam admitted, and it felt a bit like falling and a bit like freedom to admit.

Without a word, Ronan took the hand that Adam rested on his stomach and brought it to his lips. He kissed each knuckle, then the pads of each finger, and then the palm, and then the wrist. Adam’s breath hitched at the tenderness. His eyelids fluttered closed.

“I love you,” Ronan whispered between kisses, “so much.” He took Adam’s other hand and repeated the gestures. “And I know I can’t fight these demons for you, but I’m with you every step of the way.”

Adam swallowed, repressing a shudder. “I love you, too,” he said before slipping into sleep.

_They see right through me_

_Can you see right through me?_

_I see right through me_

_I see right through me._

“Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

“ _What?_ ” Ronan blinked at Adam once, twice, three times to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

“Maybe,” Adam said slowly, “I shouldn’t go. To Harvard.”

“The fuck, Parrish?” There was a metallic clink as Ronan put down the pan he was holding and turned around fully to face Adam.

“I don’t — I’m not like them. Like you. They’re gonna see right through me. They’re gonna know I don’t belong.” Adam felt the sudden and uncomfortable surge of anxiety that had haunted him in the months before starting at Aglionby. This was the way he got when something he wanted was close enough to touch: insecure, and afraid, and very, very small.

Ronan watched him carefully from across the kitchen, biting his lower lip. “You’ve worked too fucking hard for this to get cold feet now,” he said, no heat to his voice.

“I worked my ass off, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I deserve it. That doesn’t mean I’m good enough.”

The words hung heavily in the air for several moments before Ronan dared to speak again, trying his damnedest to keep his voice under control.

“Adam Parrish,” he said, having gone straight past anger into something more dangerous, “I want you to listen to me very carefully. You. Deserve. This. You. Are. Good. Enough. Fuck, you’re _more_ than good enough. You _earned_ this, okay? Ivy League acceptance letters and full-rides aren’t just handed out to anyone. Are you listening to me?”

Without meeting Ronan’s eyes, Adam nodded.

“This isn’t Aglionby. This is fucking _Harvard_. Nobody is going to fucking care how you dress, or what car you drive, or if you’re on a scholarship. They’re gonna care about how smart you are, and how hard you work. That’s it. And you’ve got that shit in the bag.”

Nodding again, Adam lowered himself quietly into a chair at the table, his jaw clenching. He was very quiet for another moment, and then he said, in a voice so soft it was almost swallowed by the silence of the kitchen, “I know. I’m just afraid.”

Ronan crossed the room easily, coming to sit on the floor in front of Adam and dropping his head unceremoniously into his lap. “I know,” he said, voice partially muffled by Adam’s leg. “That’s okay.” 

Adam ran a hand lightly over Ronan’s buzzed scalp, grounding himself. “What if I hate it there?”

“You won’t.” It wasn’t really an answer, but at the same time, it was.

“What if everyone there hates me?”

“They won’t.”

“What if it’s too difficult for me?”

“It won’t be.”

“What if—”

“Adam.” Ronan looked up, one hand curling around Adam’s hip. Adam looked down at him, swallowed hard. “It’s going to be everything you ever dreamed of. I promise.”

“You promise?” Adam breathed.

Ronan nodded. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Adam’s lip wobbled, steadied. He sighed. “I have to go,” he said.

Ronan understood what he meant. He hated it, but he still said, “You do.”

“Do you know what the best part of leaving is?”

Ronan leaned his head forward again, resting his forehead against Adam’s thigh. “What?” he asked, voice catching.

Adam curled forward into him, wrapping his arms around Ronan tightly. “Coming back,” he whispered.

_Who could ever leave me, darling?_

_But who could stay?_

Ronan hadn’t come to visit in three days, nineteen hours, and four minutes.

Not that Adam was counting or anything.

He usually didn’t have much time for wallowing, not between work and school and work and Monmouth and work and the Barns. But it was summer, and he had quit two of his jobs and cut his hours at Boyd’s, and Gansey and Blue and Henry had left for their roadtrip, so. There was plenty of time for self-pity. And Adam was determined to catch up on all of the doubt and insecurity he had missed out on all through high school.

Ronan hadn’t visited in three days, and Adam didn’t even know why. They hadn’t fought recently, hadn’t even accidentally pushed each other’s buttons harder than usual. Things had been good. No, things had been _great_. And then suddenly Ronan had stopped visiting and didn’t even call.

Not that the phone bit was surprising. It would have shocked Adam more to receive a call or text than the radio silence he was currently suffering through. But God, he wished Ronan would call. Even just for a minute. 

A thought occurred to Adam, so sudden and horrible, that he knew he would never get it out of his head: _What if Ronan is breaking up with me?_

The larger, more practical part of his brain immediately pushed this thought aside. This was _Ronan_. He had been in love with Adam forever, and he probably always would be. “Ronan Lynch is like an otter,” Blue had mused once, when Ronan was out of earshot. “He mates for life.” 

But there was another part of Adam’s brain, more fearful, more vocal, that clung to this idea with surprising fervor. _Of course Ronan is breaking up with you,_ it hissed. _You’re screwed up. You’re broken. Who would want you?_

All at once, Adam felt his throat closing, his chest constricting, and realized he was in the throes of a panic attack. It had been months since the last one, and his brain scrambled to remember what exactly worked to calm him down before it got too bad. He sat up in bed, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, and just tried to breath.

 _Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold._ His breathing was the most important thing to focus on, he reminded himself. Step one, focus on breathing. He liked things in order, found comfort in routines. This was no different. Breathe first. Just breathe.

Once he felt that he had a hold on his breathing, he moved onto step two. _Ground yourself._ There was some specific tip Gansey had mentioned once, something that helped with keeping yourself centered. 

_Think about five things you can see._

Okay. That was easy. He catalogued them with a level of precision that only Adam fucking Parrish could have during a panic attack: a pair of boots on the floor; a jacket hanging on the wall; the bathroom door, slightly ajar; the overhead light, turned off to allow natural sunlight to illuminate the room instead; and a polaroid picture of him and his friends, the day after graduation, clinging together and grinning goofily at the camera. 

_Think about four things you can hear._

Okay. Four things. Simple enough. Adam counted them out on his fingers: the ticking of the analog clock above his desk; a vehicle passing by on the street below his apartment; the creaking of the pipes in the walls surrounding him; and his own heartbeat, loud in his ears, finally starting to even out.

_Think about three things you can feel._

Okay. His breaths were coming easier now, but he continued the procedure anyway, not daring to mess it up. He ticked them off silently: the slight breeze through the open window, cooling the room down; the threadbare sheets underneath him in his bed; and the broken spring in the lower left quadrant of the mattress, digging into one of his legs, reminding him where he was.

_Think about two things you can smell._

Slowly, Adam drummed his fingertips against the bed, letting himself inhale deeply. One: the cheap laundry detergent he used on his bedding, the comforting scent of clean linen. Two: faintly, because he had left his dirty coveralls on the floor after work, the smell of gasoline.

_Think about one thing that you can taste._

Blood. He had bitten a hole on the inside of his bottom lip, and now the familiar taste of copper filled his mouth.

Adam was very still for a moment, save for his deep breaths, and then he laid back down gently, training his eyes on the ceiling. It was okay. It was okay. He was okay.

And then, because apparently the universe had decided he had exceeded his daily peace quota, there was a knock at the door.

Adam slid out of bed quietly, took the two steps to the door, and opened it with a sigh. He was somehow simultaneously very surprised and not surprised at all to see Ronan standing there, grinning.

“Hey, Parrish,” he said before leaning in to kiss Adam on the cheek.

“Lynch,” said Adam, allowing it.

Ronan paused for a beat, then furrowed his brows slightly. “You gonna let me in?” he asked.

Adam stepped back indifferently, opening the door wide enough for Ronan to enter the apartment. As soon as he was over the threshold, Ronan kicked off his boots and sauntered over to the bed, sprawling across it, and eyed Adam suspiciously. Adam just stared back, arms crossed, leaning against the wall as he watched.

“Something wrong, Parrish?” Ronan asked, propping himself up on his elbows to make direct eye contact.

Adam shrugged. “You tell me.”

The room was uncomfortably quiet for a moment. “Is today be-vague-and-ambiguous-about-why-you’re-mad-at-your-boyfriend day? Because I seem to have missed the memo.”

At this, Adam rolled his eyes, pushing off the wall to go sit in his desk chair. “I dunno,” he said thoughtfully, scratching his chin. “But on the subject of missing memos, I guess I never got the one about disappearing for three days and not bothering to call.”

Ronan opened his mouth to say something, then decided better of it. He snapped his jaw closed with an audible _click_ , ground his teeth for a moment, and then sighed. “I… didn’t realize that I had disappeared,” he said slowly, as if considering every word before letting it leave his mouth. “I was in D.C. visiting Declan and Matthew.”

Relief rushed through Adam’s veins, but he didn’t let it show. Instead, he said, “And you couldn’t call?”

The look Ronan shot him said, _Me? Call?_ but out loud what he said was, “ _You_ couldn’t?”

Adam felt his ears burning. Ronan certainly had a point: if Adam had been so worried, why hadn’t _he_ called Ronan to find out where he was? Or texted? It wasn’t like he wasn’t capable.

But because he was kind of looking for a fight, Adam said, “It’s not like you would’ve answered.”

Ronan rolled his eyes at that. “Yeah, I would’ve,” he said indignantly, fixing Adam with a particularly intense gaze. “Because it would’ve occurred to me that, oh shit, I forgot to tell my boyfriend that I was going out of town this weekend.”

“So you forgot.”

“Yeah, obviously, I forgot.”

“Forgot about _me._ ”

“Ye— Oh, shit, was that some sort of trick question that’s gonna lead to a huge fight? Fuck, Adam, just say whatever you’re thinking, I’m not here to play a fucking game with you.”

Against his will, Adam blushed at the sound of Ronan calling him by his first name. That was something usually reserved for moments of physical intimacy, and if Ronan was breaking it out in the middle of an argument, he was either hoping it would get under Adam’s skin or remind him what Ronan had come here for in the first place. 

Either way, it had certainly worked.

“I was _thinking_ that you were breaking up with me, you bastard,” said Adam, only he said it all in one breath, so it came out more like _Iwasthinkingthatyouwerebreakingupwithmeyoubastard._

Ronan sat up straight now, his eyes wide. “What?” he asked, his voice much louder than it had been moments ago. “You thought— _What?_ ”

Adam finally had the decency to look away. “I thought you were breaking up with me,” he repeated, his leg bouncing nervously. “I thought that you had, I don’t know, decided I was too, like, messed up, or whatever.” He heard his accent slipping through and tried to rein it in, but Ronan was much more concerned about other aspects of the conversation.

“Why would you — fuck, Adam.” Ronan was suddenly crawling across the mattress toward him, taking Adam’s hands in his own. “I love you,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I love you, and I don’t mind that you’re messed up, because I’m pretty messed up too, in case you haven’t noticed. And I love you, and I wouldn’t — Jesus, fuck, Adam, I’m not going to break up with you.” He kissed Adam’s hands one at a time, then leaned up to kiss his lips. “I love you,” he said again.

Adam kissed him back, his entire face warm. “I love you, too,” he mumbled, pulling back just enough to rest their foreheads against one another. “I just… I don’t know. Historically, people don’t really, you know… stay. For me.”

One of Ronan’s hands reached around to the nape of his neck, holding him close; the other rested on the back of his calf. “Well, I’m staying,” he said softly, his eyelids fluttering. “Not going anywhere. And I don’t care how much I have to say that. I’ll tell you every day, if I have to. I’m staying.”

Adam breathed in, held, breathed out. An imitation of Ronan’s smoker’s breath. A shortened version of his panic attack breathing. “I’m staying, too,” he murmured, not daring to open his eyes. “I mean, I’m going, but. I’m coming back. To you. Always to you.”

Ronan nodded infinitesimally. They had had this conversation a dozen times, but it never got any easier. Adam wasn’t sure it ever would. But he said it again, because he needed Ronan to know. “If you want me, I will always come back to you.”

“I want you,” Ronan breathed.

“Then I’m coming back.” 

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

_You could stay._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this instead of dealing with my emotions. Panic attacks are not universal experiences but Adam's was based on mine. If you wanna talk, request something, etc. you can find me on Tumblr @wespers :)


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